The Talmud, which can be translated as “instruction” or “learning”, is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also traditionally referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the “six orders”. The Talmud has two components. The first part is the Mishnah, the written compendium of Judaism’s “Oral Torah”. The second part is the Gemara, an elucidation of the Mishnah and related writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably, though strictly speaking that is not accurate.
The whole Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Talmud contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (Jewish law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics.
The structure of the Talmud follows that of the Mishnah, in which six orders of general subject matters are divided into 60 or 63 tractates of more focused subject compilations, though not all tractates have Gemara. Each tractate is divided into chapters, 517 in total, that are both numbered according to the Hebrew alphabet and given names, usually using the first one or two words in the first mishnah.
The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates. Statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject; or recording only an unattributed ruling, apparently representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as Tannaim.
Since it sequences its laws by subject matter instead of by biblical context, the Mishnah discusses individual subjects more thoroughly than the Midrash, and it includes a much broader selection of halakhic subjects than the Midrash. The Mishnah’s topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole. But not every tractate in the Mishnah has a corresponding talmud. Also, the order of the tractates in the Talmud differs in some cases from that in the Mishnah.
In the three centuries following the redaction of the Mishnah, rabbis throughout Palestine and Babylonia analyzed, debated, and discussed that work. These discussions form the Gemara. Gemara means “completion” in Hebrew or “learning” in Aramaic. The Gemara mainly focuses on elucidating and elaborating the opinions of the Tannaim. The rabbis of the Gemara are known as Amoraim.
Much of the Gemara consists of legal analysis. The Gemara frequently refers to these statements in order to compare them to those contained in the Mishnah and to support or refute the propositions of Amoraim. All such non-Mishnaic sources are called a baraits (pl. baraitot) which means “outside material” – that is, “works external to the Mishnah”. The baraitot cited in the Gemara are often quotations from the Tosefta (a compendium of halakha parallel to the Mishnah) and the Halakhic Midrashim.
The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements used in different approaches to Biblical exegesis in rabbinic Judaism. These exchanges are usually between two (frequently anonymous and sometimes metaphorical) disputants, termed the makshan (questioner) and tartzan (answerer). Another important function of Gemara is to identify the correct Biblical basis for a given law presented in the Mishnah and the logical process connecting one with the other.
Traditionally Talmudic statements are classified into two broad categories, halakhic and aggadic statements. Halakhic statements directly relate to questions of Jewish law and practice (halakha). Aggadic statements are not legally related, but rather are exegetical, homiletical, ethical, or historical in nature.
Traditionally, this Talmud was thought to have been redacted in about the year 350 CE by Rav Muna and Rav Yossi in the Land of Israel. Its final redaction probably belongs to the end of the 4th century. In 325 CE Constantine, the first Christian emperor, said “let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd”. This policy made a Jew an outcast and pauper. The compilers of the Jerusalem Talmud consequently lacked the time to produce a work of the quality they had intended. The text is evidently incomplete and is not easy to follow. The apparent cessation of work on the Jerusalem Talmud in the 5th century has been associated with the decision of Theodosius II in 425 CE to suppress the Patriarchate and put an end to the practice of formal scholarly ordination.
The Talmud Bavli (or Babylonian Talmud) consists of documents compiled over the period of Late Antiquity (3rd to 5th centuries). Talmud Bavli comprises the Mishnah and the Babylonian Gemara, the latter representing the culmination of more than 300 years of analysis of the Mishnah in the Babylonian Academies. [26] The foundations of this process of analysis were laid by Rab, a disciple of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi. Tradition ascribes the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud in its present form to two Babylonian sages, Rav Ashi and Ravina. Rav Ashi was president of the Sura Academy from 375 to 427 CE.